Abstract
Lightweight construction continues to be of outstanding importance for many industrial sectors, and often relies on ribs or stringers to stiffen flat surfaces. Stringer sheet forming provides an efficient path to produce stiffened parts avoiding the disadvantages of milling or casting these structures. However, due to the deep penetration welding process, the first part of the process chain, stringer sheet parts are limited in terms of material choice and surface quality.
This paper presents an approach to overcome both limitations by employing a fillet laser welding process to produce the semi-finished parts. It leaves no welding seam on the outer side of the stringer sheet, significantly increasing surface quality and therefore allowing application as a visible part e.g. in car bodies. The process furthermore allows for the fabrication of aluminum stringer sheet parts which can be formed within an acceptable forming process window. These parts are found to be equally efficient concerning the stiffening effect when compared with steel stringer sheets. In conclusion, fillet welding is found to be the superior option concerning surface quality, material and weld seam strength.
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Acknowledgement
The investigations presented in this paper were carried out within the research project IGF-21721 N “Tailored Stringer Sheet Forming”. The authors wish to thank the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations (AiF) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) for supporting the project IGF 21721 N.
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Biffar, S., Endres, S., Niekrawiec, A., Groche, P. (2022). Enhancement of the Stringer Sheet Forming Process Chain by Means of Laser Fillet Welding. In: Behrens, BA., Brosius, A., Drossel, WG., Hintze, W., Ihlenfeldt, S., Nyhuis, P. (eds) Production at the Leading Edge of Technology. WGP 2021. Lecture Notes in Production Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78424-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78424-9_2
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